Sometimes I’m blessed with the most amazing sights outside my kitchen window: flocks grazing; chickens running to and fro; turkeys displaying their spring splendor, trying to impress their mates.

Lately I’ve been letting the flock stay out later, the afternoon sun warming their backs as they graze those last bits of lush green pasture before getting locked safely into their pen for the night. They meander up when the time is right, some kind of biological clock telling them the long day is over and that it’s time for a warm bed of hay and rest.

On one night in particular, the girls headed straight for their favorite spots, all in a row, one by one. They reminded me of elephants walking head to tail, each one holding onto the tail in front of her. Behind them were the six lambs, following along as if they, too, knew it was time. The moms began settling in nicely, easing themselves into wind-down mode. Suddenly, as if someone turned on a switch, all six lambs did a 360 and raced right back out of the pen. They ran to one side and just stood there, bunched up and leaning against one another, and I swear they were smiling. Then, from a completely still position, the two biggest ones leaped straight in the air, did a half nelson, and landed back down with very pleased looks on their faces. Like a bunch of 5-year-olds, they stood there as if to say, “We’re not ready for bed yet.”

All I could think of was the times when, as mothers, we’ve called our kids to come in from playing in the garden and have gotten the “Oh, Mom, just five more minutes” reply. I might have thought it was time to close the gate, but the babes had other plans. As I approached, they took off like a shot, ran down the pasture, did a complete once-around and then headed straight for the pen. Neither I nor their moms were in charge. “Teenagers,” I said to myself. “They’re like a pack of adolescents, feeling their oats.”

Once the babes were back in the pen, each one found its mama and then, when and only when they were ready, they started settling down. I’ve been told before that, when you’re around animals long enough, you’ll come to learn that you’re not actually the boss. For me, giving up control is a good thing. I’ve always thought I was in charge, but farming has taught me otherwise. Once again I’m reminded that I’m there to keep them safe and to tend them, to feed them and to enjoy them, but really, they have their own nature. I’m learning to respect that and allow them to be, well, sheep. More than that, I’m learning to enjoy it.

I had a great experience recently in selling my first lamb, a sweet black ram who went to live on a farm in Houlton, Maine. I’m not a life-long Mainer, and I’m still learning how big this state is. When I got a call from a gentleman who wanted a black ram for wool, I asked him where he was. Houlton, he said. Since my trips generally keep me within a 50-mile radius of the midcoast, I had no idea where that was. Almost to Canada, he told me.

I was intrigued—and a little leery of how we were going to connect from there to here. He told me he is 80 years old, still farming, and has an all-black flock. We planned to meet at noon on a Saturday in Searsport to make the exchange. At 1:30 I was still waiting and feared he had gotten lost somewhere along the way. As I sat in my Volvo wagon with the babe quietly munching on hay in the back, I began to have reservations about selling this little one. The man had admitted he was getting up there in age, didn’t get around too well, and, frankly, seemed a little confused about things. But when he arrived, my reservations vanished.

He was upset that he was so late and that I had been waiting so long. He had gone the wrong route and stopped several times to ask the way before finally figuring it out. Turns out someone gave him the wrong directions, or maybe he heard them wrong. Doesn’t matter. The way he put it was: “I don’t think most people know where they are on this earth.” He was wearing—I swear—a starched pair of jeans. I know they were a lot cleaner than mine, with big suspenders holding them up. His big farmer hands rested on the steering wheel of the pickup as we talked for a few minutes, and then he made out a check for the babe. He brought out a big wooden box, a beautiful thing someone had made for him to transport a pig. He also brought a blanket to cover the lamb, “in case the wind was too cold.” He said he didn’t want the little guy to get the sniffles.

I almost cried. I did on the way home.

People amaze me. There is gentleness in this world and goodwill. I was sitting there, annoyed that my carefully planned day was getting taken up with delivering this lamb to a man who couldn’t find his way out of Houlton. Now I’m just grateful this lamb found a home with a man with gentle hands, a farmer who will tend this little guy as he becomes a daddy to his own flocks. We parted with the man inviting me to come visit. He said he’d even clean up the house. I told him that, when the season was over and before the flakes flew, I’d try to do just that.

I feel so lucky when I meet the greatest people and they happen to be farmers. I wish that everyone, human and animal, could have warm blankets to keep the sniffles away and somebody’s big, warm hands to guide them through life. In the meantime, I’m going to keep glancing out my kitchen window at my own peaceable kingdom—a partnership of the simplest kind and one I’m happy to enjoy.

Dyan Redick describes herself as “an accidental farmer with a purpose.” Her farm, located on the St. George peninsula of Maine, is a certified Maine State Dairy offering cheeses made with milk from a registered Saanen goat herd, a seasonal farm stand full of wool from a Romney cross flock, goat milk soap, lavender, woolens, and whatever else strikes Dyan’s fancy. Bittersweet Heritage Farm is an extension of her belief that we should all gain a better understanding of our food source, our connection to where we live, and to the animals with whom we share the earth.

ALL PHOTOS: BITTERSWEET HERITAGE FARM

BY TONI TIEMANN  A few of us from the HOMEGROWN/Farm Aid team had the opportunity to get our elbows dirty at a recent workshop on composting with coffee at Counter Culture’s Boston-area training facility. Everett Hoffman of Bootstrap Compost, a local start-up that picks up food scraps from commercial and residential customers and turns them into compost, was on hand to lend his know-how. 

Bootstrap’s Everett Hoffman and Counter Culture’s Jake Robinson

Everett went to Skidmore College with dreams of becoming a carpenter but decided to enter the world of composting after hearing Will Allen of Growing Power speak at an urban agriculture meeting. “It’s creative and artistic,” Everett says of compost. “You are literally making something from what you would have thrown away.” Since I’m not an experienced composter, I sat down with Everett after the workshop to get the lowdown on composting basics, plus tips on what to compost, including some surprises.

1. Balance your nitrogen and carbon levels. Compost should maintain a carbon to nitrogen ratio of 30:1, although this formula can vary, depending on what the compost will be used for. Typically, for the right molecular balance, you want three “brown” materials for every “green” one. Brown materials, like leaves and sticks, are high in carbon, whereas green ones, like most vegetable scraps, have a higher nitrogen content. 

This gets tricky with substances like coffee that look brown but act green. Similarly, grass is high in nitrogen when it’s green and growing but builds greater carbon content as it dries out. One way to determine if your compost is balanced is by its smell. If the compost smells bad, you’ve got too much nitrogen and need more carbon. Solution: Add more twigs or leaves. And if the pile isn’t decomposing, it’s probably lacking nitrogen, which you can fix by adding more food scraps. 

2. Know what you’re brewing: fungal- versus bacterial-dominant compost. There are two types of compost: fungal- and bacterial-dominant. Fungal compost works over a long period of time and is most effective for growing shrubs and trees. Bacterium, on the other hand, isn’t capable of breaking down wood on its own. Bacterial-dominant compost works best in a garden environment because it has a higher level of nitrogen, a crucial element for growing tomatoes and veggies.

3. Give your compost enough water and air. “There are more microorganisms in this handful of compost than there are stars in our galaxy,” Everett said as he lifted a handful of compost at the coffee workshop. Just as humans and plants need water and air to survive, so do the microorganisms in compost. The perfect compost should leave your hand moist, but not dripping wet, when you squeeze it.

You also want to keep an eye on the density of your compost pile. Compost needs rigid materials like twigs or wood chips to create space for air to circulate throughout. Compost can reach temperatures of up to 160 degrees, and the microbes need to be able to breathe when the temp starts to rise. Those rigid materials also help encourage an even distribution of water, like stones in a brook.

So, now that we know the basic principles, what can we compost? Old shower loofahs? Leather? Feathers? Elmer’s glue? Everett’s mantra: “It’s not waste unless we call it waste.” He shared the dirt on six things you can compost—but might not be.

Toni (right, with Jake) prepares to plant bean seeds in compost-rich soil

1. Coffee. Everett says people across the globe throw away 20 million tons of coffee grounds each year, so compost is a great way to reduce that waste. Coffee makes a good addition to compost because it’s 2 percent nitrogen by volume, a relatively high concentration that aids plants in the natural process of creating chlorophyll.

2. Hair. From both humans and pets, for that matter. Hair is a source of nitrogen and is nonputrescible—good word, huh?—meaning it doesn’t smell bad quickly. Hair is similar to a substance like fish guts, which also provides a high amount of nitrogen but is putrescible.

3. Shells/mollusks. Because a shell takes a long time to decompose, it adds a long-term supply of valuable calcium as it breaks down.

4. No. 6 plastics. Any plastic with “PLA” embossed on its bottom is no. 6 plastic, meaning it can be composted in a professional facility. Companies like Vegware and NatureWorks recently started manufacturing cups and other products made from this corn-based plastic.

5. Dryer lint. Most lint found in the dryer comes from cotton, which is a plant, making it compostable. Lint typically has a higher concentration of carbon than nitrogen, but it contains both.

6. Humanure. Humanure is basically what it sounds like: manure made from human fecal matter. (Go ahead and take a minute to digest that one.) Humanure is not readily compostable on its own and requires a special composting toilet. Once it has been processed through the composting toilet, the remaining feces can be blended with a substance, such as wood chips, and used to grow mushrooms. The mushrooms remove any pathogens from the humanure, and the remnants then can be used like typical compost.

Don’t want to recycle your poop? Don’t sweat it. There are plenty of other things to compost, and doing so is a great first step in living a more sustainable life. In fact, Everett says, Americans throw out a staggering amount of food every day, enough to fill an entire football stadium. Most of this waste is sent to landfills where it produces a tremendous amount of methane, a dangerous greenhouse gas.

Although composting may seem like a small act for a single person, Everett sees it as the beginning of a bigger movement for change. “The way that we feel affects the way that we think, and the way that we think affects everything,” he says.

MORE FROM HOMEGROWN

• See HOMEGROWN 101s on composting and making compost tea

• Check out HOMEGROWN member Karin’s blog post for suggestions on where to get free compostable coffee grounds

Toni is a second year student at Northeastern University pursuing a bachelor’s degree in journalism with a minor in music industry. Having grown up on a farm in Upstate New York, she is completing her first co-op at Farm Aid and is very eager to learn more about modern farming practices. Toni has a passion for live music, hiking, creative writing, and cooking.

Raising livestock can be very rewarding. You get to build this intimate relationship with the creatures that provide your food. You take a great deal of care in their raising because you want them to be healthy and happy. The healthier and happier they are, the better the food they produce for you will be.

On the other side of the coin, sometimes, no matter how well you care for them, you’ll end up losing livestock. For whatever reason, they may give up before you do, and once they do, there really is nothing you can do to save them. Mindy was my biggest heartbreak. I still get teary-eyed when I think about her.

For those who are new to reading the blog, two years ago we got to help Bella kid Mork and Mindy. It was the first kidding we’d ever had here—or even attended, for that matter. When they were born, Mork was up and at ‘em immediately. His sister, however, was not. She nursed right away, lying down next to Bella, but other than that, she was very slow to stand.

From then on, she was never quite right. The kidding coincided with a huge storm and what ended up being one of the wettest, longest winters I can remember. Very quickly she got coccidiosis, which we treated, only for it to come back again soon after. When we finally knocked it down all the way, she got in a good week of normalcy. It just so happened that was the week we had a photographer here for a book, and there were some amazingly cute photos of her playing.

But the healthy week was short lived. She started to show signs of goat polio, and off to the vet she went. The vet had us give her vitamin B1 shots for three days, but when that was up, we didn’t see any improvement—and now she was wheezing.

Pneumonia is particularly dangerous in goats. The vet put her on some strong antibiotics, and at first she seemed to be improving. But then she crashed. Really fast. She was fine in the morning, and then that afternoon we came home to find her unable to keep her balance, wheezing heavily, eyes bulging. We were sent to UC Davis, where they confirmed that she had not only pneumonia but also encephalitis of unknown origin. She wasn’t going to improve, so we had to let her go. It’s amazing how such a small little creature can get into your heart so quickly.

Since she was from our very first kidding, losing her also made me really nervous. In the back of my mind, I had this fear that doelings were just too fragile. Daisy’s buckling, Mongo, and Mork were big, strapping kids and incredibly healthy. But Mindy, our one and only doeling, couldn’t make it past a few weeks. Bailey proved me wrong, and she’s definitely eased my fears, however irrational they may be.

Sometimes, though, they continue to fight. As many of you know, Hank, my tom turkey, is one of my favorites around here. I came home from work one afternoon a couple of months ago to find him stumbling and completely off balance. He also appeared to have lost sight in one of his eyes. I was completely freaked out. We don’t have any poultry vets around here, so the first thing I did was email Clare to get some advice. She really helped, and I can’t thank her enough.

Unfortunately, it was unclear what was causing the issue. After looking up various poultry sites, it seemed that maybe he had a mineral or vitamin deficiency. Fortunately, he was eating and drinking fine, as long as he could stay standing upright, so I was able to give him some extra supplements. But after a few days and no improvement, I had to look elsewhere. In the meantime, he seemed to be getting worse. His vision in the other eye was questionable, and Tom was feeling like it might be time to put Hank down. The photo of him above was taken just a couple of days before he fell ill, and I was scared that it would be the last one I would have of him. I stood there in the yard, holding him up and crying. I just wasn’t ready to let him go yet.

I finally decided to use antibiotics. I’m not one to use them on a whim, so it took a lot of thought to decide to go this route. Clare gave me some advice on the length of treatment, so I put him on the patio (it seemed to offer him better footing) in his own pen and makeshift coop and started him on antibiotics. Within a few days, the improvement was noticeable. After 10 days, he gobbled at me. By the end of the round, he was strutting and calling for his ladies. He’s now back with everyone and soon to be a dad again. I’m glad we fought for him, since he was still willing to fight.

My friends in college used to call me a Renaissance woman. I was always doing something crafty, creative, or utilitarian. I still am. My focus these days, instead of arts and crafts, has been farming as much of my urban quarter-acre as humanly possible. Along with my husband, I run Dog Island Farm, in the SF Bay Area. We raise chickens, goats, rabbits, dogs, cats, and a kid. We’re always keeping busy. If I’m not out in the yard, I’m in the kitchen making something from scratch. Homemade always tastes better!

ALL PHOTOS: COURTESY OF RACHEL